Indicators of News Media Trust: A Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey

In this report, part of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Trust, Media and Democracy initiative, Gallup asked a representative sample of U.S. adults to discuss key factors that make them trust, or not trust, news media organizations. Key findings:

• Most US adults, including more than nine in 10 Republicans, say they personally have lost trust in the news media in recent years. At the same time, 69% of those who have lost trust say that trust can be restored.
• Asked to describe in their own words why they trust or do not trust certain news organizations, Americans’ responses largely center on matters of accuracy or bias. Relatively few mentioned a news organization’s partisan or ideological leaning as a factor.
• Accuracy and bias also rank among the most important factors when respondents rate how important each of 35 potential indicators of media trust are to them. Transparency also emerges as an important factor in the closed-ended ratings of factors that influence trust: 71% say a commitment to transparency is very important, and similar percentages say the same about an organization providing fact-checking resources and providing links to research and facts that back up its reporting.
• An experimental approach not only showed the importance of accuracy, bias and transparency, but also revealed a complex relationship between partisanship and media trust. Both Republicans and Democrats were less likely to trust news sources with a partisan reputation that opposes their own. However, they did not express much greater trust in news sources that have a reputation for a partisan leaning consistent with their own.
• Majorities of all key subgroups say their decreased trust in the media can be restored. There is little difference by gender, age, education and race. However, Democrats and liberals who have lost trust in the media are more optimistic that their trust can be restored than are independents, moderates and especially Republicans and conservatives. While at least six in 10 Republicans and conservatives say their decreased trust in the media can be recovered, 39% and 36%, respectively, say it cannot. In other words, about one-third of those on the political right have lost faith in the media and expect that change to be permanent.